The line between science and pseudoscience is imperceptible to most. Here’s how you can catch it in yourself. When it comes to science, the first principle is that you must […]

The first identified visitor from another solar system gets its own Starts With A Bang podcast! In 2017, the incredible happened: for the first time in history, we were able to […]

It’s not simply Hubble’s Law anymore, but the real history is far more complex than the stories you’ve heard. One of the most mind-blowing facts in our existence is that space […]

When scientists claim that an unexplained phenomenon might be due to aliens, they’re giving up on science. Whenever science discovers a new, unexpected phenomenon, it represents a tremendous opportunity to learn […]

The answer has nothing at all to do with the Higgs boson. In this Universe, there are very few fundamental properties that cannot be derived from something simpler. The rules governing […]

By time you see a pillar at all, almost all of your ‘formation’ is already finished. In the heart of the Eagle Nebula, the iconic Pillars of Creation loom as […]

Despite what Hawking told you, it really isn’t about particle-antiparticle pairs at all. Nothing in the Universe lives forever. All the stars that will ever form will someday burn out; distant […]

The Large Hadron Collider allowed us to complete the Standard Model. Even so, what we have is incomplete. Here’s what could come next. The Large Hadron Collider is the most powerful […]

Your fate is only rarely determined at birth. Ultimately, every star has a chance to get there. Three times in the past 1,000 years, a portion of humanity has looked up […]

These ten ghostly astronomical sights house some deep-and-frightening scientific truths within them. With a huge suite of different observatories for viewing the Universe, innumerable details can be revealed. This ‘Godzilla’ asterism […]

From newborn planets to entire galaxies, we’re seeing the Universe as never before. The idea of a modern telescope is simple: collect light from a distant object, at high resolution, and […]

There may be a fundamental reason why time travel, backwards, is impossible. We’ve all had the dream of traveling back in time. Whether there’s a wrong we want to right, […]

Our existence is finite, but that’s no reason for despair. Here’s a version of the story we all should hear at least once. This world, and for that matter, the entire […]

Representation matters. Meet five stellar women in physics who were unjustly denied their place in history. Nobel season is now over, with another year in the books of celebrating the scientists […]

Planets can ‘discover’ nuclear power on their own, naturally, without any intelligence. Earth did it 1.7 billion years before humans. If you were hunting for alien intelligence, looking for a surefire […]

NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory has shown us the Universe like nothing else ever before. When it comes to the Universe, it mainly generates X-rays through high-temperature heating. X-rays from Chandra reveal […]

Instead of eternal expansion, could we just be part of a universal cosmic cycle? There are few questions that can keep us up at night the way pondering the eventual fate […]

If the Sun is 93 million miles away, why does sunlight filtering through the clouds or the trees spread out? Rays of sunshine are one of those natural sights that leave […]

These three reasons are why there’s no getting around the fact that astronomy needs the James Webb Space Telescope. Even the most powerful telescope in history, the Hubble Space Telescope, […]

LIGO’s enormous arms contract and expand as gravitational waves pass through them. But, puzzlingly, so does the light within them. For the past three years, humanity has known a new kind […]